


know thy breath in the burning sky

by beautyoftheshadows (orphan_account)



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/F, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, rating for some violence and death but nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 23:57:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10582137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/beautyoftheshadows
Summary: An exiled princess and a girl from a mountain village each have the other's name inked into their skin.





	

Once upon a time, in a small, high mountain village, there lived a princess. She wasn’t a princess because she was born in high society, or because royal blood flowed in her veins. She was a princess in the loosest sense only, as she was a girl who would someday be a queen.

It was a secret she kept clutched tightly to her chest, one she dared not share. Only her mother knew, for loving, watchful mothers know their daughters’ every secret, especially those that are inked onto their skin. This one was, or at least appeared to be, although the girl knew that no needle had ever touched her. Instead, it had appeared one day above her heart, a name written in curling black letters, stark against her pale, freckled skin: Ororo of the line of N’Daré.

Even in the high, green mountains where young Jean Grey lived, people knew the name Ororo. She was the princess in the west, the Jewel of the City of the Sun, the Heir to the kingdom of her mother Queen N’Daré.

Jean had other secrets as well, ones she hid from even her mother. For while the blood in her veins may not have been royal, it was tainted with something far more powerful: magic. There was power in the young girl’s blood, power darker and stronger than anything she knew, and so she kept it hidden. She buried herself in books during the day, studying under the local scribe, and at night she would slip silently from her bed and climb the nearby peaks.

There, in the dead of night, she practiced her craft, letting the magic she had kept bottled up during the sunlight hours explode out of her in a dazzling display of light and strength. She found few limits- everything she wished moved would move, every person whose thoughts she wanted to know she knew, every single time she wished to, she could fly. If she’d had more imagination, wished for more, maybe she could have accomplished other things, or maybe she would have found the limit to her power, but she never did. She was too scared to try, lest she fail, or, perhaps, lest she succeed. She was content to fly in the cool mountain air, among the high, bright stars, and dream only vaguely of the world beyond.

It was a bright, sunny dawn when her mother found her bed empty. This was not quite reason for panic, but the girl was not to be found in the garden or the kitchen, and she had not yet shown up for work. She wasn’t gossiping at the well with the boys of the town, and young Henry said he had not seen her. By midmorning, the whole town had been searched, and it was clear that Jean Grey was gone.

It was a few days after that, in a driving ice storm, that a royal messenger climbed the peaks and told them of the news. General Farouk, the Pretender, had taken the City of the Sun. He had slain the Queen and King, and the young princess had vanished. The house of N’Daré was fallen.

* * *

 Between the desert and the mountains lay the vast plains. They were wide and rolling, with high grasses that caught fire in the dry season, and the twin dangers of being stalked by a predator or stampeded by a herd of prey. They were hospitable enough, however, for a resourceful runaway princess. Ororo of the line of N’Daré, former Heir to the Throne, the Jewel of the City of the Sun, the last surviving member of the royal family, had run to them in exile, under the cover of night and a sudden, violent thunderstorm. The people of the plains would stand with her even in exile, for Farouk the Pretender had taken only the City of the Sun.

She moved from village to village, from city to city, talking with the leaders in low tones behind closed doors. She told them to be ready to strike and time and again, they promised they would be behind her when the time came, bowing to her commanding presence and reasoned logic. They organized their men and kept their ears to the ground, and she blessed them with rain for a healthy harvest, for the line of N’Daré was royal and magical both, and she could do such things.

In between, she walked alone, trusting her fate to the grasslands and the silver knife she carried with her. Every step she took was for her people, her purpose, her kingdom, and while she missed the company of others, missed the playful teasing of her friends and family, the protection of the guard, she knew this was a journey she had to take alone.

One morning, as the sun broke over the horizon, she saw a flash of red and gold above her. As she moved forward that morning, the shape remained at the edge of her vision, though she never saw it directly. When the sun was nearing its apex, she took her lunch in the shade of a tree that grew at the edge of a small watering hole. As she rested, the shape that had been following her glided down from the sky and settled in the branches above her head. Ororo gasped.

It was a phoenix, a bird born in the fires of death, its feathers the red and gold and orange hues of the flames that gave it life. The exiled princess had never seen one before, but as she looked into the piercing green eyes of the bird before her, she became aware that she was in the presence of a creature with a soul.

When Ororo embarked from that place, the bird took off from the branches and flew into the sky. She expected it to disappear over the edge of the horizon, but instead it circled overhead, sometimes far, sometimes near, but all that afternoon, it stayed in her sight. Only as the sun disappeared and Ororo stopped to make camp did it fly off into the distance. When the first light of dawn woke her the next morning, it had returned, watching expectantly as she prepared to start her journey for the day.

From then on, as she journeyed from place to place, the phoenix flew with her, from dawn to dusk each day. When she reached a town, the bird would settle on her shoulder, by her side as she rallied the people to her cause. Once or twice, it warned her of danger she would otherwise have missed- a snake in the tall grass she might have stepped on, a man with a knife who wished her dead. Even had it not, she would have been grateful for its company, as it was her sole companion during her long trek over land.

As she left a village one afternoon, as the shadows were already lengthening and the night beginning to draw near, a group of men closed in around her. They were Farouk’s spies, the Pretender finally having learned that she yet lived, that she yet fought for her throne back.

The phoenix rose from her shoulder, defiant, and burst into flames, distracting them for a crucial moment. Ororo drew her knife and dispatched one man in a spray of blood as she slit his throat. The battle was fierce but quick, the men no match for an impassioned princess and a magical firebird. As most of the men lay on the ground, the last one made a mad, desperate dash for Ororo, and the phoenix dived in front of his blade. As the bird fell, Ororo killed him.

The bird’s wing was damaged and dirty with blood, but it yet lived. Ororo bandaged its wound as best she could, cradling it carefully. Night was coming, and she had to make camp. As she did so, the bird stirred. Weakly, it flapped its wings and found, with a horrible cry, that it could not fly. Instead, it resolutely, unsteadily hopped its way out of camp, and no matter how much she called to it, it was intent on going. Finally, she let it, hoping it would return in the morning, as was its custom.

At daybreak, it did not show. Ororo knew that time was precious in the fight for her kingdom, but still, she would not leave it. She waited, the whole day, as the sun rose in the sky and set back down. Night fell and it had not come; Ororo had no choice but to leave the next day. In her troubled mood, she could not stop the storm from brewing.

She woke that night to the sound of hyenas on the hunt, a chilling sound that had her grabbing her knife and borrowing flame from her fire for a torch. Venturing only a little way from her camp, she found them, circling around the unmistakable form of a human woman. The clouds overhead rumbled and the air seemed to shake with anticipation as she called down the lightning to strike the creatures. They ran from the lightning, slinking off into the far distance as fast as they could, calling their strange call all the way. She dropped to one knee beside their intended prey.

The woman was very pale, with flaming red hair and familiar green eyes, and an infection spread out from the wound in her arm.

“You are my Phoenix, aren’t you?” The princess asked, touching a hand to the woman’s cheek. She was burning with fever.

She raised her own hand in reply, pressing it weakly to Ororo’s cheek. “As you are my Storm.” She was silent a moment, then spoke again. “Do one thing for me?”

“Anything,” Ororo promised.

“Burn my body,” she said, and her eyes locked with Ororo’s own. “Burn it to ash.”

Ororo kept her promise. The body of the woman who had been the Phoenix burned surprisingly easily, even in the driving rain. Then the princess, the last of the line of N’Dare, put the smoke of the pyre at her back and continued on her quest, alone once more.

* * *

In the light of the campfire, Ororo contemplated the words on her arm. Jean Grey, they read, the name of her supposed soulmate. She wondered where Jean Grey was. Was she perhaps even now in the City of the Sun, the city that loomed in the distance, the city whose own princess, whose rightful ruler, would attack it tomorrow? She hoped not; she hoped her soulmate was far beyond the northern seas, somewhere safe from the chaos that tomorrow would bring. The chaos would not last beyond that, of that she was determined. Tomorrow she would find and kill the Pretender.

The battle commenced in the morning, right on schedule, and the far superior numbers of the princess’s forces, combined with the divided loyalties of the people of the city, made the attack swift and easy. By evening, they had advanced up to the gates of the palace, Farouk’s last stronghold. It had been a long day of fighting for the princess, but she was restless, unprepared to give up. Nevertheless, she had to concede the wisdom of her generals when they advised that it was necessary for the soldiers to rest. She herself slept only lightly and woke the moment the flap of her tent was pushed open.

There, bathed in moonlight, stood the Phoenix in her human form. She took Ororo’s hand and led her out of the tent. They walked through the rows of soldiers unnoticed, as if they were invisible. They stopped at the edge of the camp, and the Phoenix lifted them up, into the air.

They alighted on the balcony and entered through the doors, left open to let in any cool breeze. Perhaps it ought to have upset her, the idea of killing an enemy in his sleep, but as Ororo gathered the man up in her winds and threw him from the room, she had no such qualms. The Pretender fell to the city streets below, where his mangled body would be found by soldiers come morning.

She turned to survey the bedroom, not bothering to hide her disgust. “This was my parents’ room, and my grandparents’ before that. Once we clean it of his taint, it will be our room.”

“Our room?” The other woman asked.

“You are Jean Grey, are you not?” The queen said.

Jean Grey, sorcerer, Phoenix, and soulmate to the queen, quirked the corner of her mouth into a smile. “Indeed I am, my love.”

Ororo, Queen in the West, the Heir of the line of N’Daré, the Jewel of the City of the Sun, smiled back. “Our room, then.”

So it was for many years, and the two queens ruled wisely and well, but all things must end. The day came when both were burned on funeral pyres and the kingdom passed to the hands of their daughter. Still, there are those who will tell you that sometimes, when a thunderstorm rages over the grassland, in the flashes of lightning, you can still see the Phoenix flying high in the arms of her love.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from William Cullen Bryant's poem "The Hurricane."


End file.
